Main Tour Inside HEARST CASTLE in San Simeon

We're on a road to nowhere. Actually we are going somewhere. It's a little after 5am, Brooke's come up and picked me up and we are on our way to San Simeon to see one of the most amazing castles and architectural masterpieces of all time. We're about one minute away. Well gang, at the top of that hill is Hearst Castle. The home of William Randolph Hearst who had a girlfriend named Marion Davies who was, because of him some say was made a star and William Randolph Hearst was the owner of most of the newspapers in the United States at the time. Some say he even helped decide who won elections. And this was the house, well the castle, that he lavished out with every fantasy that he had ever had. And what he would do is he would invite anyone that he wanted to have a friendship with, mainly stars, up here for weekends and would entertain them. It's said that you did not ever turn down a William Randolph Hearst invitation. You always came and online there's some really great old black and white grainy footage of one of the weekends where John Gilbert, one of my favorite silent movie stars, and Irving Thalberg doing little skits because William Randolph Hearst would insist that if you had any talent, before dinner you had to do some sort of skit or performance or magic show or something with your talent. And we're going to explore that in one of the tours today. Alright well Breck and I are out here. They have like four different tours so we're going to go in. I think we're going to do the main house tour. And Miss Morgan is at the Roman pool underneath the tennis courts. There will be signs similar to that one. Whoa check out the cannons. Adding on over a 28 year period and again that's probably why some of the things didn't get finished because if he knew exactly what he wanted to do at the beginning then maybe it could have been finished. But he also had multiple estates, sometimes cash flow problems. He said he'd rather spend a month here than anywhere else in the world. Dad bought the land when William was two years old so thanks dad. Again I told you he didn't do this alone. But dad died in 1891 leaving everything to mom. Phoebe Apperson Hearst, the philanthropist, patron of the arts and education, co-founder of the Parent Teacher Association and kindergarten programs in this country. And also helped build the California University system as the first female regent on the board of directors. How's that for a power mom? Dad was also a senator representing California as well as being a minor. Didn't finish the third grade but he had money. Helps to get into politics doesn't it, to have money. So he's got something that son William, only child of George and Phoebe, has something to live up to. He borrows millions of dollars from mom over the years to build up a media empire. He was the first media mogul. Guess who never got paid back? Mom. And mom wouldn't let him build up here because dad left everything to mom because they didn't trust their son. Dad named him Wasteful Willie for good reason. It was normal back then for men to leave, well men controlled all the money. You left your money when you died to your eldest or your only son. Not to your wife. They made an exception in William's case. And mom wouldn't let him build here. He asked her multiple times. She wrote in a letter she wouldn't let him build because she thought he'd get carried away. She was right. And we'll see it in a few minutes, the main house. We have three smaller houses to pass on the way there. This is House of the Mountain, La Casa Del Monte. You can see why. You can see the view. The Santa Lucia is over there. It's kind of nice not to have any neighbors. Nobody to spoil the view. And if you're going to live halfway between LA and San Francisco, then you better have some entertainment for your guests. Maybe just for your family. Because it starts out being a family retreat. And if you have five sons, the five sons and your wife might override you once in a while. Especially when it's hot in the summer. But William Randolph Hearst wanted to have his Roman Temple facade and rose gardens and a reflecting pool of water and nice looking water lilies. Supposedly will permeate the concrete and create a chrysaline structure to prevent it from leaking. It's going to look like this again. Like the photo. It's going to come back. And he also had a stable filled with horses, kennel towers to probably eat on the side. It's overt. It's between 700 and 800 years old. The wild men on either side of the doorway are 500 to 600 years old. And the rest is mostly concrete. Some limestone. Look at the size of these hydrangeas. There was a radio, or there is a radio, in the cabinet in the corner. And radio was the most popular form of entertainment into the 1930s. You saw a poker table probably as you walked in. Play back something that was played on the piano with the same intensity and speed. A conversation. You may never have met him. So you probably want to know a bit more about conversation. You don't want to say the wrong thing. Why did he invite you? He invited world class athletes like Johnny Weissmuller who played Tarzan in the movies. Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel. Beat the men's record by nearly two hours. Big Bill Tilden, Alice Marble, tennis champions. But also dog groomers, horse breeders, employees, people he met in his travels. Royalty, semi-royalty, and heads of state and such. Maybe not knowing Mr. Hearst, you know about his parents. He was an only child. She had her own money. With his help, she became the second highest paid actress in Hollywood. After Mary Pickford. And she was considered by some people in Hollywood to be the first zany or screwball comedian. Some people said she made up for the bad people in Hollywood. And that she was like the bubbles in champagne. So sort of a slapstick comedian. Think after her later on of Gracie Allen, Lucille Ball, Goldie Hawn, Kate Hudson, Phyllis Diller, Carol Burnett. Not afraid to make a funny face, do an impression of a movie star. Or the president's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt. She was very good at it, at mimicking people. So she'd be meeting you probably at the front doors. Introducing you if you were shy. Playing matchmaker if you were single. And just making sure you were comfortable. And then eventually Mr. Hearst would come down from his third floor gothic suite and study. And join you. And he could run his over 90 businesses up there. In fact, he was the first media mogul. He owned 28 daily newspapers across this country. 16 magazines, 8 radio stations. Produced 174 films. Invented the newsreel. Which is a way of getting your news with pictures in your local cinema theater before television was invented. These are what we call choir stalls. They lined the sides of churches. So your choir members sat in those. Or other clergy members. These are 16th century Italian. On the other side, 15th century Italian. The walls are concrete. They have a faux finish on them. To look like stone blocks. He's got tapestries that are about 500 years old. He thought they were like the headlines of history. This French mantle over mantle fireplace over 400 years old. Owned by the Dongleur family in the Chateau du Jour in the Dijon region of Burgundy. The ceiling, from somewhere in Italy. But it's not all wood. Part of it is plaster. Painted to match the wood. The lighting structures were created by Mr. Hirst Craftsman. Because if you have a ceiling that's over 400 years old. They didn't have electric light bulbs back then. Oh wow. Look at that musician's loft up there. It's alright, get your photos. Just make sure people can move behind you. The choir stalls as well. These are older. These have two different sitting positions. Standing when you're not really. If you've been to a long Catholic service. They're called Misericordia. Which is Latin for mercy seats. These are Catalonian 15th century. These are refectory tables. A refectory is a name for a dining room in a convent, monastery or university. There are two tables that meet here in the center. These are 300 and 400 years old. In a convent or monastery. You'd have three of them set up in a square U shaped formation. With everybody sitting on the outside facing inward. So maybe you're talking about all the things you did today. Because of everything Mr. Hirst had available to you. Or maybe about who you met. Who knows who's sitting across from you during dinner. And maybe Mr. Hirst was mischievous. And put a Republican and a Democrat across from each other. Who knows. Think of your favorite celebrities. They might be sitting right across from you. And Mr. Hirst owned some of Napoleon's China. But he favored real old Willow Stoneway from England. As is every day. Not terribly uncommon in the 1920s and 30s. Daniel is interpreting his dreams. We've got Nebuchadnezzar in the other tapestry also. These are about 500 years old. So we want to stay on the carpeting. And long into the marble. It's been undergoing a cleaning process for about 6 years. They are cloisonne enamel. They are very, very well decorated. If you have a camera that works well in low light. Get as close as you can. Get a well focused photo. And you can enlarge it quite a bit. It's called a mille fleur or a thousand flower tapestry. It's Franco-Flemish. If you've seen a unicorn tapestry, it's a similar type. Although any sort of brightness will fade something after a while. Not just UV light. And we are in the theater. This is the ground floor tour. On his arm looking like a Canadian fur trapper. This is actress Marie Dressler. Very gifted comedian. Any Canadians here today? Charlie Chaplin. Making a tennis racket into a banjo. I think very convincingly. He was a frequent guest. They called him the court jester up here. Here he is again on the left. On the right is Adolphe Mongeau. Columnist. Next to in the bow tie. A.P. Giannini. Founder of the Bank of Italy. Which became Bank of America. Now you'll see Virginia Bruce. And her husband John Gilbert. John Gilbert was the silent screen heartthrob. But his high pitched voice didn't make it very well into talkies. When they added sound. Claire Windsor on the left. Dolores Del Rio on the right. Dolores thought to be one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood. Spoke seven languages. Western Mexico. Charlie Chaplin again. Was married to Clark Gable. Another huge celebrity. Claire Windsor. Buddy Rogers. Both actors. You see Buddy smoking there. Mr. Hearst did not smoke. He thought it gave you what he called tobacco lung. Which is what most people would do if they were 126 million dollars in debt. He sold many things. Sold land. Possessions. Eventually got out of debt. By the end of World War II. Well that was the ground floor tour of Hearst Castle. We're going to go take a walk around. Look at some of the outside grounds. And we're going to take off. Isn't this a beautiful grounds? 28 years worth of creating ideas. And changing your mind. And having, buying works of art from Europe that were being sold after World War I to pay off debts. And then not having enough. So you had to have artists create replicas to finish out your project. You got to admire it. You really do. Now let's go walk some of the grounds. Now what was great was that they said Mr. Hearst had pretty much all of the food sources come from up here. So he grew all of his fruits up here. He raised all the animals up here that would be food. Cattle. Chickens. Poultry. All of his dairy and everything. Apricots. Apples. You name it. Now obviously we're not going to be able to show you all of the grounds today. There's just too much. And the video would be way too long. But have no fear. This is not the last time you will see Hearst Castle in Jordan the Lion Vlogs. Now this was actually Egyptian. Mr. Hearst loved to travel the world and basically took all of his favorite styles of art and created this amazing castle up here. What was called, this is the main house, which was modeled after a Spain, Spanish design. This was called Casa Grande. And this is where he would, this was the front door that he would greet all the guests. And when you saw that archival footage of Marie Dressler and Mr. Hearst, that was right actually in front of this door right here. They said that they don't use this as an entrance anymore because there was a tile work right on the other side that you would walk through and it had gotten destroyed over time. So they got it replaced and the man who replaced it requested to not have to do it again. But look at the detail on the outside of Casa Grande. That bell. Now there's stuff all on the outside of the grounds. You can see that's actually the ocean over there. What a view. Right now I'm just trying to give you guys all the angles of Casa Grande. It's so big that it's hard to fit it all in and give you an idea of what the grounds actually look like. The funny thing is they said if you wonder why this is kind of bare on the sides, whereas many other parts of the castle have gargoyles and ornamentation, it's because he wasn't finished. When the Great Depression hit and everything he had a massive setback and owed a lot of money and then through the help of Marion Davies, she helped him rebound and he came back and just happened to die because of his age and everything before he was able to finish it. And so when the family requested, because he was actually married. He was married with five kids and the reason he and his wife didn't divorce was because in those days the divorced wife would be shamed. So they kept it together but he still had Marion Davies as his girlfriend mistress. When she died, she ended up giving everything that was left to her of his estate to the wife and kids. And he of course left them quite a bit of his fortune anyway. So Brooke and I are gonna go walk some of the grounds, show you some of the views that his guests would have enjoyed. Now one of the things they kept reiterating on the tour which I thought was so cool was that they said when you were a guest of Mr. Hurst, not only did you not pay for anything, he arranged your accommodations to get to San Luis Obispo and your pickup from there. And then he brought you here and everything was on him. Your room, your food, everything. But then the only thing that you were required to do while you were a guest here was show up to dinner. The 7 p.m. dinner. Other than that you could ride horses, play tennis, go swimming. Go ride horses through the trellis. I mean it was just, the things were endless. And look, they have some of the little walkways chained off. But they said some days guests would just roam the grounds gathering their bearings, trying to figure out where they were and seeing everything that there was around like this. See there's all kinds and like they said on the tour, a lot of this wasn't even finished. A lot of the things that you see were works in progress that never got done. That was clearly a fountain. Oh, look at that view. Isn't that magic? Now this is the house that they said, this is where, since this was a 28 year process of building Casa Grande or Casa La Cuesta, right there. While that was being built, while he was still with his wife and his 5 sons lived here, they actually lived in this house right here. And look, he spared no detail even on the grounds out here, the stairwell, and the view. Now they actually said all these lamps that are on the property, you'll see them everywhere. Mr. Hurst actually had each and every one of those handmade for the property. Headless! That was the formal name of this house. And here's the famous tennis court that we saw in that old footage. Charlie Chaplin and the first American to win Wimbledon. They were all playing right here. Carol Lombard, think of that. Historic. Wow! There were pretty much endless things to do here at the castle. Well, that's it gang. I hope you guys enjoyed seeing the ground floor of Hurst Castle. Like I said, they have 4 other tours. They have a night time tour where they actually have a staff that walks through as though you get to experience what it would have been like should you have been a guest here. They have an upstairs tour. Then they have a guest cottages tour. We're only today, for this vlog, we're only going to do the ground floor. Have a great night and I will see you all tomorrow. Goodbye!